Kick Picks: Crowd-funded games about lovable perverts, the Black Plague and Ron Paul

Kickstarter

Hey, cover your mouth when you cough! In Peter White's Kickstarter-funded game "Plague," you play as the Black Death, inhabiting hosts and getting seemingly innocent children's rhymes written about you.

Hey, cover your mouth when you cough! In Peter White's Kickstarter-funded game "Plague," you play as the Black Death, inhabiting hosts and getting seemingly innocent children's rhymes written about you. (Kickstarter)

The Pitch: "You play as the plague, trying to spread sickness to as many inhabitants of each level as possible - but in a fun way!"

Goal: $20,000

Status: 5% funded, ends April 29

There’s a contingent of people who hate playing as the good guys in video games. Then there’s people who wish they could control a continental pandemic and wipe out half of Europe. Credit where credit is due for originality, as there is no major game studio right now scratching this concept off their list. Would there be a sick pleasure about hopping from human to cough to rat to human in order to take down innocent cobblers and peasants? Hopefully this game gets funded so we can find out. If you give this project $3,000, you actually get to be the final boss of the game, in case you’re one of those folks who believe you were medieval royalty in a previous life.

No, I don’t think you understand. You’re not just pressing a button and destroying and altering things with your little rabbit character. You’re actually screaming at your phone or computer to control the game. Sure, Kinect allows you make some simple decisions in games using voice input, but screaming to make enemies explode based on your intensity is truly visionary. Leave it to the Aussies.

The Pitch: "Leisure Suit Larry using Kickstarter to hit on everybody at once"

Goal: $500,000

Status: 34% funded, ends May 2

If you weren’t alive or didn’t have a computer in the 90s, “Leisure Suit Larry” was a hapless cartoon loser who was on a never ending quest to get laid. Under the skeevy surface, the “Larry” games were very well-crafted graphic adventure titles that happened to draw horny teens and snickering nerds in with loads of sexual innuendo (if you couldn’t tell by the title of the project). Leisure suits haven’t been around for forty years now, but the aptly named Replay Games is trying to breath some life into the lovable pervert.

Just like it sounds: a side-scrolling ass-kicking game about the Republican presidential candidate. Ron Paul is not only fascinating for his libertarian politics, but for the fact that he’s actually older than John McCain and yet he’s seemingly all the rage amongst the youths. Why wouldn’t you make a video game about him? The guy is basically Ron Swanson from “Parks and Recreation” minus the moustache.

This game looks simply breathtaking. These guys should’ve set their fundraising goal higher, because anyone who’s ever doodled in the margins is going to be in awe of this creation, which is being made exactly how it sounds, with hand drawn graphics on notebook paper. Fine, I’ll say it — pew pew pew!